President Barack Obama speaks about the My Brotherís Keeper Initiative, at the Walker Jones Education Campus in Washington, Monday, July 21, 2014. A US appeals court has delivered a serious setback to President Obama's health care law, potentially derailing subsidies for many low-and middle-income people who have bought policies. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON >> A federal appeals court ruling that came down on Tuesday could threaten billions of dollars in subsidies for many low- and middle-income people who bought health policies on the federal exchange, but will not affect Californians, state officials said.

“The judicial ruling has no effect on us,” said Anne Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Covered California.

But the ripple effects of the federal court’s ruling on the future of state exchanges remain unknown. Several decisions and appeals remain in the courts, still to be made and heard, experts said.

The White House meanwhile said health subsidies under the Affordable Care Act will continue to flow for the time being despite the setback delivered by a federal appeals court.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest says while the case works its way through the courts, it has “no practical impact” on tax credits. He said the White House is confident in the Justice Department’s legal case.

Earnest says there’s mixed legal opinions on whether people who buy insurance through state-based markets can get subsidies.

The ruling affects consumers in the 36 states served by the federal marketplace.

Dylan Roby, director of the UCLA center’s Health Economics and Evaluation Research Program said the federal ruling is still subject to review and does not mean the Affordable Care Act will be toppled so quickly. Locally, “it’s not going to affect California unless more people come to California for those subsidies, but more employers leave California to avoid penalties.”

California was the first state to establish its own market exchange, and received $1.5 billion in federal funding to expand its Medi-Cal program.

The exchange received $1.5 billion in federal funding to expand its Medi-Cal program for the first enrollment period that began last October. Of the roughly 1.3 million that enrolled through Covered California between October and April, 88 percent qualified for a tax subsidy.

As part of the case and Tuesday’s ruling decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a group of small business owners argued that the law authorizes subsidies only for people who buy insurance through markets established by the states — not by the federal government.

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A divided court agreed, in a 2-1 decision that could mean premium increases for more than half the 8 million Americans who have purchased taxpayer-subsidized coverage under the law. The ruling affects consumers who bought coverage in the 36 states served by the federal insurance marketplace, or exchange.

The majority opinion concluded that the law, as written, “unambiguously” restricts subsides to consumers in exchanges established by a state. That would invalidate an Internal Revenue Service regulation that tried to sort out confusing wording in the law by concluding that Congress intended for consumers in all 50 states to have subsidized coverage.

In reaction, Justice Department spokeswoman Emily Pierce said the decision was incorrect, inconsistent with the intent of Congress, and at odds with the goals of the health care law.

The administration is expected to seek a hearing from the full 11-member appeals court.

The issue is crucial to the success of the health law because most states have been unable or unwilling to set up their own exchanges. The inaction stems in many instances from opposition by Republican governors to the Affordable Care Act.

The small-business owners filing the lawsuit say the tax credits enacted by Congress were intended to encourage states to set up their own health benefit exchanges and that the penalty for not doing so was withdrawal of tax credits for lower-income residents.

Supporters of the act say the purpose of the tax credit was not to promote the establishment of state exchanges, but rather to achieve Congress’s fundamental purpose of making insurance affordable for all Americans.